It won’t be a one-man celebration. He’ll skate straight to his teammates first or wait for them to join him so they can celebrate as a team. It’s what he learned from his parents growing up in Richmond Hill, playing hockey for the AAA Toronto Red Wings and going to The Country Day School in King City.

“That was our philosophy,” says Craig Clarke, Cammalleri’s coach for five years from minor atom on in the Red Wings organization. “We had a reputation of being an ultimate team. And Mike focused on what had to be done, not on what had just been done.”

Cammalleri talked about there being a “Toronto” way to play hockey when his Montreal Canadiens, with fellow GTA natives P.K. Subban (Rexdale), Glen Metropolit (Regent Park) and Dominic Moore (Thornhill) all contributing significantly to the Habs’ playoff victory over Pittsburgh.

Clarke says players from the GTHL were always hated whenever they’d go to tournaments in Quebec or Waterloo or Sudbury. So they were generally told by their coaches to rise above it, to be polite and respectful, especially toward their opponents and referees.

“If you teach your kids to respect the opposition, respect the officials, you have a chance to win,” says Clarke. “If you win, you gain a reputation, and Mike gained that reputation.”

Cammalleri — always the captain, always liked, always the best player on the best team — was the ultimate team player, says Clarke.

“In five years that I had him, we went to a lot of tournaments, we won a lot of tournaments. But the MVP of those tournaments were always his wingers,” says Clarke. “To me, that’s the sign of an unselfish player. Mike makes other players play better.”

Clarke points to a piece of NHL evidence: witness Jarome Iginla’s year with Cammalleri in 2008-09 (Iginla had 35 goals, 54 assists and made the playoffs with his Calgary Flames) and Iginla’s year that just passed, without Cammalleri (32 goals, 37 assists and missed the playoffs).

The Flames’ loss was the Habs’ gain. The accolades that followed the heroics of Jaroslav Halak in net are certainly warranted. But a goalie can’t win a game without offence. And Cammalleri has provided that offence, showing a killer instinct with shots that often resemble heat-seeking missiles.

“Mike loved to practise,” says Clarke. “But when practice was over, he used to step on his dad’s toe, because his dad would be chatting to every parent. That was a sign to say: ‘Let’s get home.’ He didn’t want to hang around the rink. He’d go home, do his homework, then go down the basement, turn on the radio and shoot pucks until it was time to go to bed.”

Those who knew Cammalleri before he became the superstar of the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs describe a young man who was smart enough to know what he wanted, determined enough to know he’d get it and athletic enough to pull it off.

And humble enough not to let it all go to his head. Mark Burleigh, the phys. ed. teacher at The Country Day School, remembers the day he was shooting some hoops by himself, waiting for his students to come out.

Burleigh did a trick shot — left hand, behind the back, through the legs, right hand and in from 12 feet. A 10-year-old Cammalleri saw it. Asked his teacher to do it again. Burleigh obliged.

“Gimme that,” Cammalleri told Burleigh. “Boom. He does it. First try. Nails it. I’ve taught a lot of kids and clearly he’s the elite of the elite. But I’ve never been associated with anyone who is so well connected, brain to body. Combine that with the focus he has and the maturity and the intelligence he brings.”

Growing up in Richmond Hill, Cammalleri participated in softball, track and soccer.

“He was an exceptional soccer player,” says Burleigh. “You see some of the foot skills to stop the puck and redirect it to the stick. He was a phenomenally talented athlete from the perspective of hand-eye, foot-eye and fine motor-skills coordination. Equally determined and intense.

“When he chooses to do something, it’s going to happen.”

Cammalleri chose hockey and education. After his minor hockey with the Toronto Red Wings, he moved to Tier 2 Bramalea. He took accelerated courses to graduate high school at 16 so he could attend the University of Michigan on a full scholarship.

“I don’t think he’d jinx it and say he wanted to play in the NHL,” said Burleigh. “But he wanted to play hockey at the highest level he could play. He was very serious. Education was the way he had decided he was going to develop.”

Clarke remembers a kid who knew how to have fun on the ice and could even, without knowing it, teach his coach a thing or two.

“I’d tell the kids to handle the puck, go down the ice and go around the pylon. He would do what I asked, and he’d be adding creativity with his hands. He’d be handling the puck, passing the puck, moving his stick around the puck, he would essentially be playing with the puck,” says Clarke.

“I looked at that and I thought, ‘That is different than I have seen from any other child, his creativity within a drill.’ It taught me that all kids can add something to the game.”

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